Roofing Dumpster Rental in Rochester

Roofing is the one job on this site where the sizing question has a real arithmetic answer, and it is not about volume. A roof is measured in squares, and a square is a hundred square feet of roof surface. What decides your container is the number of squares and the number of layers coming off, because shingle is dense. A single layer of three-tab runs in the region of two hundred and fifty pounds per square, and architectural shingle is heavier again. Two layers roughly doubles the weight without doubling the volume, which is why a tear-off container reaches its legal payload long before the sides look full. Count the squares, count the layers, and tell us both when you call. That one sentence gets the size right more reliably than any description of the house, and it is the whole method behind our tear-off size guide.

What generates roofing work in Monroe County is mostly winter, and specifically ice dams. Rochester averages 102 inches of snow a year. Snow accumulates on a roof, heat escaping through the ceiling plane melts the underside of the pack, the meltwater runs down to the cold overhang and refreezes at the eave, and the ridge of ice that builds there backs water up under the shingle courses. What you see inside is a stain on a bedroom ceiling in February. What you find in April is rotted decking at the eave, saturated insulation in the attic bay, and shingle that has been lifted and refrozen for three winters running. That is why a Rochester tear-off so often turns into a decking job at the bottom four feet of the roof plane, and why we ask at booking whether decking is coming off. Decking changes the container. Plywood and board sheathing are bulky where shingle is dense.

The other seasonal fact is timing. Roofing here is compressed into the months when the deck is dry and the shingle will seal, and that puts real pressure on scheduling in spring and autumn. Winter tear-offs do happen, usually because something has failed rather than because somebody planned it, and they are a different job: shorter working days, snow to clear off the deck before you can strip anything, and a container that is collecting snow while it sits. Snow in an open container is weight you pay to haul, so a winter tear-off gets tarped between sessions and collected promptly rather than left standing. If your job is weather-dependent, say so when you book and we will keep the slot flexible rather than pretending a fixed date exists. Our winter rental article goes through how we route in January and February.

Placement on a roofing job is different from every other service we run, because you want the container as close to the roof edge as it can legally go and the code says exactly how close that is. The Fire Code of New York State, at 19 NYCRR Part 1225, carries the International Fire Code rule that a container over the size threshold shall not be stored in buildings or placed within five feet of combustible walls, openings or combustible roof eave lines. Five feet is the stable number across code cycles and it is the one we work to. The capacity threshold itself tightened in the 2025 code cycle, so check the current figure with your local code enforcement officer. On a roofing job that five-foot line is the constraint that picks the spot: close enough that tarps can run from the eave into the box, far enough off the siding and the soffit to be lawful. We set every container with that measured, not eyeballed.

Then there is what comes off with the shingle. Flashing, drip edge, valley metal, vents and any gutter and downspout coming down are scrap metal and are worth separating rather than burying in the load. Old felt and ice-and-water membrane go in with the shingle. If the job includes a chimney rebuild or a masonry repair at the same time, that rubble is dense and belongs in a separate small container loaded flat, not on top of the shingle. And if the house is pre-1978 and the job disturbs painted exterior surfaces — fascia, soffit, trim, rake boards — over 20 square feet, the federal renovation, repair and painting rule applies to the work. In a city where roughly nine houses in ten predate 1980, that is a routine consideration on exterior work, not an unusual one. Call (585) 514-5622 with your squares and layers and we will size it in a minute.

Rochester Roofs And What Comes Off Them

Sizing A Tear-Off Container By Squares And Layers

Do the arithmetic rather than the eyeball. A 10 yard suits a small roof at a single layer — a garage, a porch roof, a small extension — or a modest roof where two or three layers are coming off and the weight is the binding constraint. A 15 yard handles the majority of mid-size Rochester houses at one layer, or a smaller roof carrying two. A 20 yard covers a larger house, a two-layer strip on a mid-size roof, or a job where decking is coming off alongside the shingle. A 30 yard is for large or complex roofs, multi-building jobs and light commercial, and it is the size to take when volume rather than weight is the limiter, such as a low-slope roof with a lot of insulation board. If you are between two sizes and the layer count is uncertain, take the smaller container and plan a swap rather than finding out at the gate. Sizes and dimensions are on the container sizes page.

Setting The Box At The Eave Line

On a tear-off you want the container tight to the work, and the five-foot rule is what defines tight. Under 19 NYCRR Part 1225 a container over the size threshold cannot sit inside a building or within five feet of combustible walls, openings or combustible roof eave lines, and that five-foot figure has been stable across code cycles. We measure it. Around that, the usual Rochester access questions apply: roughly 60 feet of straight approach, about ten and a half feet of width and 20 feet or more of overhead. Overhead is the one that catches people on residential streets here, because the mature canopy over the tree lawn has the electrical service drop running beneath it. On a roofing job that matters twice over, since the same wire is often exactly where the tarps want to run. Plywood goes under the wheels on every driveway set. Rochester driveways carry decades of freeze-thaw already, and a loaded roofing container is a weight job even when it looks half empty. If the container has to sit in the street, that is a written right-of-way permit from the City Engineer under City Code § 104-24, barricaded and lit at night under § 104-24(C).